


Junkrat

by Neroro



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, origin story of sorts, warning for description of corpse/dead parent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-16 17:33:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9282581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neroro/pseuds/Neroro
Summary: He hopes she likes fire, now that he's burning her.





	1. Prologue

Jamison doesn't remember his mother. He remembers wet coughs and blood running from a woman's nostrils, raspy voice telling him to hide whenever the Junkers came, delicate hands running over the too warm skin on his back. She feels huge so he must be small.

He remembers a corpse on the floor.

He cries until he makes himself sick. 

He doesn't know how to operate the stove, nobody taught him, so he eats directly out of whatever cans he can manage to reach, cold and disgusting, hurts his hand on the tin, long and deep and bloody and he cries again, gets blood all over his food. The house smells, it's been days since she died. He learns, he starts using his head, turns a few dials and see what they do, holds his hand above the stove to feel the heat, you don't put your hand on it he's learned that much, hurts like a bitch to get burned, makes the skin all weird and tender, both worse and better than a cut. He puts the food in a pot and it sticks to the bottom but it's hot, better, doesn't make him as nauseous. He pushes their one table over to the kitchen, stacks a chair on top so he can reach the upper cabinets and the last of the food. 

He puts the last two cans in a bag together with the blanket from the bed and his two shirts. Their, now his, gun goes on top, an old piece of shit that doesn't fit anywhere on his pants. He should probably keep it ready to draw but doesn't have any bullets anyway.

Jamison is ten when he douses her, it, in petrol. It drowns out the smell of decay a little. He lights a match and watches the flame sway, watches oranges and blues dance over the body. They buried the dog. He'd wanted to burn that too, now that it was dead anyway, it just seemed right, final, less left behind. He likes fire. Fire makes him all warm inside and his heart race. He wonders if his mother liked fire too. He hopes she likes fire, now that he's burning her.

The ceiling is burning, he should leave but he doesn't, not until the heat hurts and stings, too mesmerized by the flames. He runs out when the leg of his pants catches on fire, screams wild and loud and rolls in the red dirt until it's killed and then he laughs, laughs until he cries and he can't breathe and his face is full of snot and his mouth is full of sand and his home is a magnificent bonfire lighting up the night.


	2. Chapter 2

He goes to Junkertown. Well, he makes it about a third of the way before he collapses on the road, dehydrated and exhausted. He thinks about the food in his bag and feels stupid for not bringing the can opener with him, or that knife, that large knife the man always used to take animals apart with for their meat, was it his father? It feels to Jamison like it was his father, blonde hair and long arms, big hands. He did barbecues didn't he? He remembers his silhouette surrounded by fire, he always looked so worried but sometimes he'd smile wide and laugh, when he'd caught a dingo or a large bird, when his mother whispered in his ear and ran her fingers along his jaw. Jamison didn't really get it but he liked watching his eyebrows shoot up and his teeth being revealed in a grin even if half of them were missing. He liked his father's eyebrows, they were wild and funny. Jamison hopes he'll have wild and funny eyebrows too when he grows up. 

He'd left, no wait, he came back, that man, he was gone for a long time but then he came back, all weak and writing and twitchy and Jamison had to sleep on the floor because the man was bleeding from his mouth and his nose and everywhere else and his mother said he needed the bed. It was the ouside that made him sick he said, he'd told Jamison to stay inside the house as much as possible, right, he remembers now, he shouldn't have burned down the house, now he can't stay inside. He's so stupid, but he's not, right? he figured out the stove, but he does really stupid things sometimes, can't remember the things he's supposed to. His head hurts.

A group of strangers picks him up in the late afternoon, props him up on the back of a large motorcycle and drives him to town. They drop him off, nothing to spare, and Jamison crawls into the shade from a building. He needs water and then he needs shelter, someone once told him something about the outside being dangerous, some ugly giant with barely any teeth, he needs to find somewhere to sleep. No, water, then sleep. Right. Find water. 

He begs for a while but only gets a scrap of food, nobody's got any money, none they want to give to Jamison anyway. He wants to cry. The food did nothing to fill his empty stomach, just made his throat hurt instead, he blinks hard, he wants to sleep. He gets up and goes to one of the shops, nothing more than a tradepost really, puts on his best face and presents his gun, asks how much water he can get for it, he should have asked for money, water makes him seem more desperate. He tilts his head to look cuter, never been much of a looker but he has age on his side, even if he looks older than the other ten year olds he knows, well the one ten year old he knows, he died too didn't he? she? he can't remember, just a tangled mess of brown hair and a scratchy voice. 

The man places one bottle on the counter and tells him to get out. Jamison wants his gun back, he's thirsty but not stupid, he can feel the water disappear just by looking at it, he needs more, says he needs at least three bottles, man says he don't got any more but they're stacked high behind him. Jamison asks for his gun back, jumps and crawls onto the counter when he gets a no, he tries to pry it from his hand, screams and yells and digs his nails into the thick skin and holds on even as his ears ring and wet heat fills his mouth from the man's fist. Jamison bites him, sinks his teeth into the meat of the thumb holding his gun capture, he's desperate, the skin tastes horrible and his eyes are full of water, his teeth break skin and the man curses, drops the gun and Jamison grabs it with blood-smeared fingers, takes the water bottle with him in his fall to the floor and he runs.

-

Jamison learns later that water comes with a truck. He doesn't always get any, Junkers aren't known for being good at keeping lines, everyone's desperate, fists are flying and hair is pulled. Sometimes he's lucky and manages to snatch several bottles without being caught and he scurries off to his hiding place, a dusty attic in the outskirts of Junkertown. The roof looks like it could collapse on top of him any second but it's hidden and relatively dry, except for the few spots where the rain leaks in, burning holes in the floorboards. He climbs up the wall and squeezes through the small window, locking it and setting up his trap, a spring and a sharp piece of metal, a plate of scrap for the trigger.

He adds the day's haul to his hoard, expired food and stale water, a few bottles of alcohol, shiny things, pretty things, weird things. The sharp things are kept in a separate corner, he shoved them there after stabbing his hands one too many times grabbing food or water in the middle of the night. He unscrews the cap of one of his water bottles and looks down the neck of it, watches the ripples distort everything into a blur of color. "Happy Birthday," he mutters, doesn't know why, sometimes he just says things. He leans back against the wall and puts the plastic to his lips, maybe it's his birthday today, at was always really hot on his birthday, well as far as he can remember at least. He drinks half the bottle and lies down in his favorite corner, it's too hot to do anything at this time of the day, might as well preserve some energy. Jamison curls up on his side and runs his eyes over his things, his hoard, his treasure, giggles a little at the thought of making it bigger, of being able to live off of it for days, weeks, months! Of having so much water he could submerge himself in it, watching all those wankers eye him with jealousy.

Jamison falls asleep laughing.


End file.
